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March 2019

Tomorrow at church we'll be asking God to bless backpacks . Why do that? What's the big deal about a blessing?

A blessing is not magic. It is not even a "mystery." To bless something simply means to set it apart. When we ask God to bless a backpack, we are asking him to set that backpack apart. We are asking that in some way the backpack will remind the student who wears it of God's presence with them. To that end, we also have a little tag students can attach to their backpack reminding them that God is with them.

But why is that important?

I am sure you are aware that our children live in an anxiety drenched world. Though some kids show it more than others, no children are free from anxiety. The big question--one of the biggest questions of all, in fact--is "How will we help our kids learn to navigate that anxiety?"

This is one way. Just the other day my 21 year old daughter asked me, "Do you believe God is looking after me?" Though some who read this blog would answer differently, I could say quite honestly, "I do."

That's why we bless backpacks. It's a tough world our kids are growing up in. This gives them a "frame", a "context", in which they come to know they are part of something larger than themselves. It gives them one more assurance that things are going to be all right.

I am pretty certain that life throws all of us a monkey wrench from time to time. That's why it's nice when there are ailso times when everything all comes together. Today was one of those days.

It started at about 11PM last night, actually. I got a surprise message from a friend letting me know he'd procured a just released Fujifilm FinePix HS50EXR. He also said I was free to try it for a few days and see how I like it (thank you, MH!) A few minutes later we met at church and I had the camera in my hands.

Then today I got home at about 4:30 in the afternoon and didn't have to go back out again until about 6:30. That meant I had a good two hours to play around with this camera in the garden. 285 pictures later...

The final piece was that when I went outside, there were two Monarch butterflies feeding on various flowers. Caterpillars at church this morning, butterflies at home this afternoon. Now that's a good day.

If you look closely, you can tell these last two pictures are of different butterflies. One is a male and the other is a female. Anyone know which is which, and how you tell?

Not long ago, there was an opinion expressed in the Washington Post that it’s time to try “wedleases”. The basic idea is that society needs to “make the legal structure of marriage more congruent to our behavior.” And since, behaviorally speaking, so many marriages end in divorce, maybe we ought to make marriage a short-term contract rather than a life-long commitment. Hence, the conclusion that we should “borrow from real estate and create a marital lease. Instead of wedlock, a ‘wedlease’”.

I’d certainly agree that marriage has it challenges. But rather than trying out a lease, Linda and I have decided to take another approach. We’ve decided to kiss more.

It’s an interesting thing. It seems to me, anyway, that when couples are still in their early years together, and when they are still passionately in love, they do a lot of kissing. But as the years go on, couples tend to hold hands more (if they touch at all) and kiss less.

Now handholding is good as far as it goes, but it is sort of tame. I might hold the hand of a man lying in a hospital bed, for instance. And though it is an expression of love and solidarity, it is not a particularly romantic gesture.

Kissing, on the other hand… It’s pretty intoxicating stuff. You have to be face to face. You pretty much can’t be doing anything else. And if you give it a chance, you probably don’t want to be do anything else.

In other words, you gotta connect. And when couples stay connected in heart, body, and soul, well, a lease is the last thing on their mind…

How important is it for children to actually have a childhood? And what exactly does it mean to be a child?

It rather seems to me that by definition, to be a child is to be free from adult things. Adult worries. Adult responsibilities. Adult concepts that create worries and require at least a certain level of adult responsibility.

In other words, in a perfect world, a child would be innocent and blissfully naïve. The only way such a world could be, of course, is if loving adults protected them. Sheltered them. There will come a time when they will have to deal with the realities of the world around them, but I suppose I think there should also be a time where they are free of them. Lord knows (and he does) those realities will come crashing in soon enough.

Does a child have a right to any of these things? If the interest of adults run counter to the best interests of children, who will defend them? If a world is more interested in money (or the clicks on internet links that generate money) than the welfare of our kids, who will dare to dream of a better world, join that dream to best dreams for humanity that have inspired us in ages past, and tirelessly, courageously, work to bring that dream to pass?

I have told the story before of our family pet, a Dalmatian named Sophia (Spots on Pets Help Inhibit Arson). Sophie would smile and wag her tail furiously whenever she saw us. It made me, at least, feel like a million bucks.

But I think better still is when a person is so happy to see you that she jumps for joy. What could better than that?

Family is easy to take for granted, but it can be one of life's greatest gifts.

I recently sat with a young man who had been subjected to brutal violence. It reminded me of how… I struggle to find the right word… obscene? ugly? appalling? …true violence really is. Media portrayals of violence that glamorize it or make it look cool are so… again, hard to find a word strong enough… destructive to our humanity.

It is situations like this—situations where people are fundamentally disrespected, mistreated, or otherwise made to suffer by those more powerful than they are-- that discourage me more than anything else. I simply do not want to live in, or be any part of, a world like this. But of course I not only live in such a world, but also contribute to it.

If I were to say “Enough is enough!” and actually begin to do something about this, what would I do?

I think the commonly accepted answer is often “legislate.” But I have questions about how helpful this really is. Legislation itself is often an instrument of violence, especially the way it is practiced these days. And I wonder if much of the legislation so fervently advocated isn’t addressing symptoms while failing to get at the core of the problem. Because the core of the problem doesn’t simply involve making someone else do something differently; I think it may mean freely choosing to do something different myself.

In this it’s sort of like poverty. The obvious and easy solution to helping a poor person is to give them money or food or material goods—and that is important. But what about dignity? What about changing the social structures that produce poverty? What about sharing the actual quality of life that I enjoy? Questions like these can never simply be answered by money. They ask something more of us.

That’s why like what this group is doing. It seems like a step in the right direction.

Some of you (who are old like I am) may remember a movie called "The Right Stuff". It was the story of the Mercury 7 astronauts. The promotional shot can be seen above.

I think it may be a little dated. Here's my take on an updated version.*

*(I am still trying to figure out who this beautiful blonde woman is that seems to be showing up in so many family photographs these days. The others I do recognize; they are my brother's family as they arrived at Saturday's wedding).